Terrorist Attack in Trappes, France

Dear world, where are we? I feel as though this is the umpteenth terror attack in Europe this year.

Yes… You read that right. We’re back to hearing about the horrors related to ISIS terror attacks in Europe.

According to the Daily Mail, there was an attack in the city of Trappes, France, yesterday.

There, a local taxi driver locked himself in a house, threatening the police that he would blow himself up if they entered.

The circumstances that led to this situation are quite daunting. Scary in fact.

Kamal Salhi, the 36-year-old perpetrator, was said to have stabbed his mother and sister to death, repeatedly shouting “Allahu Akbar”, leaving a third person in critical shape.

The attacker was apprehended outside the house he was hiding in, when he was subsequently shot and killed by police upon exiting the property.

The French Interior Minister, Gerard Collomb, who visited the scene a bit later on, described the man as a ‘criminal who had significant psychiatric problems’.

Though the French Interior Minister thinks this is a medical case, the truth is that Salhi was on a terrorist watchlist, and had been on the list for quite some time, advocating for terrorism, being monitored for his radical views, and allegedly convicted in 2016 for being a terrorist apologist. Additionally, his alleged 2016 conviction had him fired from his job as a local bus driver.

ISIS claimed accountability for the attack saying that Salhi followed their call for attacks. The city he hailed from, Trappes, is a known scene for jihadist sentiment as, per the report by Daily Mail that suggests this information comes from documentation by French security sources, and approximately 50 of the city’s residents are known for having fought for ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

Collomb’s public statement is an indication that he, also, has fallen under the spell of denial. In other words, France is not the only nation to be in denial of radicalism having pervaded its borders. Our very own administration here in Canada, is known to have relayed very similar messages to the public when a terrorist attack occurs. In the case for the Danforth attack in Toronto, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau avoided any labels of radicalism, instead calling the attack “senseless”. As if a public statement identifying senselessness and psychiatric problems are going to deter these kinds of attacks when the problem is really much more sinister.

Watch the video of Trudeau providing the statement, by Global News, here:

So, where are we? It’s 2018, almost 2019. Why do we still need to live in fear in first world democratic countries? How did the political climate get to be so tense?